Latest News & Updates

News & Updates

Message from the Chair – February 2015

Message from the Chair – February 2015

Welcome to the inaugural monthly blog post from the Board of Education! This space is intended to keep readers up-to-date on priorities for the Board of Education each month and provide information about education and our community.

We are already off to a busy start for 2015. Here are the priorities we are working on this month:
• Survey questions for the Strategic Plan consultations with all stakeholder groups.
• The chair and superintendent will visit all PACs in the next four weeks to talk strategic planning, gather input and answer parents' questions.
• The Board is sending motions for the BCSTA annual general meeting in April. We urge the province to increase support for student's mental health through better collaboration between ministries dealing with youth, as well as increased funding for individual school district support for student mental health. These are consistent with our letter to the Select Committee on Finance, sent in September 2014. See advocacy letters tab on the SD46 website to read the full letter. In addition, we will be sending a letter directly to the Minister of Education this month to advocate for greater mental health support in our communities.
• Secretary-Treasurer Nicholas Weswick is preparing our budget for the 2015/16 school year. The next discussion will be at the Operations Committee meeting on February 19th at 12:30 pm.
• A BIG community forum on March 9th at Chatelech Secondary School is in the planning stages. We hope to hear from the community about their wishes for our new four-year Strategic Plan. Look for advertisements in the local newspaper and invitations will be sent soon. We hope to see you all there.

What is our Strategic Plan and why do we have one?

The Strategic Plan for our school district is an overarching document that outlines our vision, the values that are important to us and the key things we will try to achieve in the term of the plan. Our current Strategic Plan expires June 2015. The major strategies from the past Strategic Plan were Student Achievement, Relationship Building and Learning Environments. There are many subtopics under these three categories and a lot of work has been done in each. In our consultations we want to find our where the community feels we are doing well and what are the areas that need more attention for the next few years. The goal is for a draft plan to be presented to the board in May and finalized in June and July so that our new 2015-19 Strategic Plan can be implemented September 2015.